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Tag: wu-tang clan

Martin Connor

A musician and writer with a B.A. in Music from Duke University, Martin recently received his M.A. in Musicology from Brandeis University. His research is focused on rap’s vocal melodies, and has appeared at the Harvard Hip Hop Music Archive, The University of Cambridge’s Popular Music Journal, and at the University of Colorado’s rap-focused humanities lab. He’s a contributing writer for HipHopDX, Complex, and Pigeons and Planes, and has had multiple articles from his website go viral on BET, The Source, XXL, and MTV. His recent book, The Artistry Of Rap Music (2017 via McFarland Publishing House) is an in-depth music theory analysis of 130 songs by 60 rappers which charts rap’s evolution as a music from 1979 until today. It was a follow-up to his 2014 contribution to the McFarland anthology Eminem & Rap, Poetry, Race, the research for which informs the weekly rap lessons that he teaches rap lessons online through the music school LessonFace.


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  • On Kanye’s ‘MP’ Format and the Future of Albums as We Know It

    On Kanye’s ‘MP’ Format and the Future of Albums as We Know It

    Kanye West released 5 albums this summer, all of them feature exactly 7 songs. What’s the deal with this new format, and what does it say about our future?

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  • How Rap Ushered the Piano Into Its Next Developmental Phase

    How Rap Ushered the Piano Into Its Next Developmental Phase

    Hip-hop is officially pop music. With Bruno Mars and Kendrick Lamar’s sweep of the Grammy Awards earlier this year, it’s evident that hip-hop has officially shed its status as “that controversial music genre” that prompted the Grammys’ organizers to refuse to air any rap categories back in 1989, which subsequently prompted some to boycott the event.…

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  • Food & Hip-Hop: A Love Story for the Ages

    Food & Hip-Hop: A Love Story for the Ages

    This week, VH1 is premiering their much hyped new cooking show, “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party,” hosted by, you guessed it, Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart. Now, despite the fact that Snoop and Martha have quite the history, many see this as yet another tacky contribution to the typical unscripted and pulpy celebrity-centered programming for which VH1 is…

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  • How Wu-Tang, Björk and Jay Z Turn Albums into Fine Art

    How Wu-Tang, Björk and Jay Z Turn Albums into Fine Art

    There is only one single copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s newest album, The Wu – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, that has seen the light of day. The Wu-Tang Clan will auction this handcrafted album off after an international museum listening tour, and bids are already coming in exceeding $5 million. This single copy is encased in a…

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